The War Machine-God
by HVK
Summary: War came to the Nightosphere when Marceline was young, brought by machines with faces and names. Led by Debok Moom, mechanical war god and violent aspect of Technology personified, even Hunson Abadeer himself cannot battle against them and win. Yet, Debok Moom sees young Marcy, and for a moment, reconsiders.


Disclaimer: I do not own Adventure Time or Exalted.

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Marceline, young and small and still hurting from Simon's madness, cowered in the depths of the Nightosphere as it burned around it.

The demons were screaming. This thought echoed in her head: _the demons were screaming._

More than half the Nightosphere had been boiled away in annihilating plasma. For miles the ground was made of the broken bodies of the fiends that had sworn allegiance to her father, to protect her, to protect her home and-

They were dying. Nine out of every ten were dead, and add that a thousand fold, and everyone was burning.

Not with fire, but with lightning.

A demon grabbed at a cliff behind her, still screaming as a spidery limb drove down and bisected it in half, and lightning fried the still screaming pulp to ash. The spidery limb came up and scuttled away. It was not a spider, but a machine, a building-sized creature of living machinery, all hissing steam and grinding metal and glowing light that burned the demons to behold it.

(Many years later, after she met Princess Bubblegum, she remembered that light. She saw it in Bubblegum when she got... excited about science, and then something in her whimpered and cried out, 'You know not what you speak of'. But Bubblegum DID know, she embraced it, and that scared Marceline more than anything she would ever know.)

A full third of the Nightosphere vaporized into dust behind her eyes, under the weight of another machine the size of a city, pulverizing the burning earth with breath of lightning and a pure loathing for the chaos her father represented, and it sang of order, of the perfection of the machine, of the glory of war, and that all that the Machine-Titan found unpleasing would die screaming-

Her father had whispered to her. He told her that there were things older than all the worlds, that had engineered reality itself. They were things like Power and Order and Technology given faces and names, and there was nothing, nothing in all the multiverse worse than them.

Now, Marceline understood that one of them had decided that the Nightosphere had some pretty prime real estate, and thought the demons needed to be wiped away.

Untouched by the war, feeling the Nightosphere literally splitting into pieces, she still whimpered as her father came crashing down through the walls of four living buildings. He spat ichor, and whimpered, "Marceline, run-"

Something big and mechanical smashed through the walls, and Hunson Abadeer screamed loud as a metal fist met his stomach, and he spat at its feet. It, no, he responded by smashing a metal boot into his face so hard that Hunson's jaw briefly snapped off his face.

The mechanical deity, as large as a man and yet somehow ten times as big in a way beyond the physical, boomed "IMPUDENCE."

For a moment, she saw it, metal shining bright against the un-light of the Nightosphere, armor black and beautiful. Like a gigantic suit of armor, or perhaps a machine in the shape of the same; a fierce helmet with empty lenses shining bright with axiomatic light, his armor huge and bulky, with perhaps impossible theotechnological mechanisms grinding beneath. Broad-shouldered, tall and massive, it wasn't merely a machine, or just a living one. The knowledge burned in her soul, that she was looking at a god.

A god of war.

Marcy squealed in miserable impotence as those metal fists, shining bright with resplendent light, hammered into her father a dozen times over in less than the span of a second, and then twenty dozen times again. Each blow was powerful enough to shatter a man, and though Hunson was more than a man, to something like this he was merely an annoyance to be cast aside.

The cliff splintered, falling apart into shattered bits of rock from the machine-god's power. Hunson, his chest vaporized and a few tendrils holding him together, dived for Marcy as they fell, bouncing off a rooftop and cowering. She cried as her feet ached, and cried louder as her father's ichor splattered all over her, and again as the machine-god slammed into the ground behind them.

Hunson dropped her. He began to grow larger, and he said, "You dare-"

He was interrupted as pure solidified hate radiated outwards from the machine-god's eyes like a laser, right into his face. Hunson Abadeer was a monster too, a horror from beyond the ancient world, the lord of all evil and the most terrible thing to walk upon Ooo that was still technically alive.

A full third of his head disintegrated, and furious metal hands found his body, and again they struck him again and again until the rooftop ran with daemonic ichor. "YOU DARE?!" Boomed the machine-god, and his voice was so full of fury that Marcy cowered. There were no words for this anger, no room in a mortal brain for the impossible wrath burning within them. It was hot and savage, like the tip of a molten metal blade, and in that moment Marcy was absolute sure she was going to die screaming.

Hunson's legs were grabbed, and he was slammed into the rooftop again and again as the machine-god ranted. "You dare to raise your putrid stinking fists to me?! TO ME!? _You wretched splinter of the void_! You will burn! ALL YOUR NIGHTOSPHERE WILL BURN! YOUR CHAOS WILL BE CLEANSED! YOU WILL NO LONGER TROUBLE MORTALS OR TORMENT THEIR SOULS!"

For a moment, Hunson Abadeer was held up to that mechanical face, eyes like torches blazing bright. He saw the hatred, one born of protectiveness, and it saw back into him, saw everything about him, everything he had ever done. Those eyes grew brighter, and Hunson Abadeer saw the divine hatred there and he knew fear.

"Your evil ends here," said the machine-god.

"Who are you?" Hunson blurted miserably.

Synthetic muscles hissed as the machine-god gripped him by the throat. "I am Debok Moom," the machine-god announced. "A Third Circle Soul of Autochthon the Great Maker! Divine Minister of War, War Machines, Violent Paradigm Shifts, Privacy and Wealth. God of Evolution, Adversity, Violent Crime and Unexpected Change, and I am the Chief Regulator of the Technological Element of Metal! And I..." He raised Hunson up high. "Am your executioner, and the executioner of this wretched realm. THIS SICKNESS WILL BE CLEANSED FROM THE MULTIVERSE!"

Marcy cried out as Debok Moom grabbed her father, pulling on his shoulders, and she shut his eyes as he was pulled into two.

Ichor splattered over her.

She gave a single solitary whimper.

Her father was still alive, screaming as he tried to pull himself back together. She didn't see that, but she did see Debok Moom stop as he heard the whimper, finally taking notice of her. "What in the name of the Great Maker-" She blinked, and then he was before her, on one knee and regarding her with great interest. "A child? What is a child doing in this festering boil?"

He put a finger to her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. She could not resist him, not more than she could resist a blade's sharpness or the punch of a bullet. He was Metal, and metal was strong.

Her eyes met blazing lights, examining her life in a single mildly interested glance. She gulped, clutching Hambo desperately.

Debok Moom stood up, absently patting her on the head as Hunson came back bounding at the machine-god, howling like a beast, as protective as a true father. The machine-god appeared to snort. "Oh, shut up," He snapped. "I'm hardly about to do anything to her." His fist blurred, meeting Hunson's head and knocking him to the ground.

Debok Moom's hand grabbed him by the throat again, holding him up to his face. "An unexpected datum," he said. "You have a child. A daughter. Yet one that does not register as Evil. And one who loves you. Curious."

Debok Moom was silent, for a moment. Enough of a moment for a realm to be judged, the decision of a god to be reconsidered.

At last, he dropped Hunson, standing tall over them. He gave a silent command, and all over the Nightosphere, the war machines suddenly stopped. Leaving the realm dying and the demons whimpering, they bowed to their god, and vanished in bursts of purest light.

Hunson said, "My Nightosphere, you... you have stopped."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Debok Moom stood calm. "The existence of your daughter has given me additional data," he said matter of factly. "You are not, it would appear, a purely cancerous entity. If your daughter's feelings towards you are an indication, there may yet be a possibility of you remaining as a positive influence on the multiverse. My decision to kill you and your demons, and repurpose your realm, has been rescinded. For the time being."

"Oh," Hunson said. "Um. Good?"

Debok Moom leaned in. "Make no mistake. I am not showing you mercy. If I ever learn of your demons tormenting sapient life on an organized scale again, or you breaking out of here on your own accord, I will find you. I will break you. And I will exterminate every last one of you and turn your soul into an ash tray."

"And don't forget," Debok Moom said to Hunson. "I could have killed you. I let you live. Never forget that I could have done so with less effort than it takes to breath, or that you owe me every single second of your existence to me from this moment forward.

"And as for you," he said to Marcy, who blinked. "...Use your life well. I anticipate your existence with interest."

He left, then, and for the next thousand years she wondered what he meant by that.


End file.
